Ice ice baby

 

Every day we are offered two outings, even if we aren’t signed up for something special like mountaineering or kayaking.  These take the form of either a zodiac “cruise” to look for wildlife or a zodiac transfer to a landing site where we can walk and explore within a defined range.Typically, the night before a landing, we are treated to a talk on one of the animals we will be searching out. So far, we’ve learned about whales and seals and gone in search of both.  We were phenomenally lucky in getting to hang out with two humpback whales whose dipping and diving in search of food resembled a most elegant water ballet. Because I now know that markings on whale tales are as unique as fingerprints, we could easily keep track of who was who, despite their best efforts to trick us by appearing randomly in different places. They have a very helpful early warning system by spraying through the blowholes on the tops of their heads before more fully surfacing.  You hear the noise of the spray before you see the smooth, elegant curve of their back, and I had to resist the very strong urge to shout “thar she blows” at the top of my lungs. Once their lungs are filled again, they arch their backs and flip their graceful tails in the air as they dive down for their next mouthful of krill. If the angle is just right, the sun hits the water flowing from those tails like a majestic waterfall, until it disappears into the sea only to repeat the sequence somewhere else in a few moments. We are utterly insignificant.

Actually, that’s the key message that we get from all of our outings, either on land or sea.  We are very, very small and the Antarctic is very, very big.  I just finished reading the Booker Prize winning “Orbital” which gives the perspectives of seven astronauts on the International Space Station.  They speak of how seeing the earth from space  makes them see how human life is both meaningful and profoundly meaningless.   That’s how Antarctica makes me feel.

I never knew that there could be so many shades of white and so many forms that ice can take.  We are surrounded by mountains of icing sugar and  in a sea dotted with sea ice ranging in size from domestic cubes to titanic icebergs.  There are ice sheets that look solid, but can tip with the slightest swell and acres of ice that resemble giant slushees. The oldest ice is crystal clear, having been formerly part of heavily compressed glaciers.  The newest ice is full of bubbles that you can hear popping around you like a bowl of Rice Krispies. If you listen carefully, even this vast empty space is full of sound.  Today we saw an iceberg “calving” at closer range than I was entirely comfortable with.  The crack and crash of the ice into the sea is both thrilling and terrifying. 

We were not lucky in our search for seals this morning, and after almost three hours of zooming around in the zodiac on pretty bumpy seas, I finally had my first experience of being cold.  I learned my lesson and will always layer up more than might be immediately necessary. This will be helpful information as I prepare for camping on the ice tonight.  This afternoon we had a landing at Damoy Point where we visited a very small abandoned shelter build by a British research station many years ago.  I believe it was used as a place to wait to be picked up by ship in the days when no one knew when that ship would arrive. Brrr. There were several penguin colonies there, and these gentoos were more curious than your average penguin, and they would happily hang out less than a meter away from us. I know it’s wrong to anthropomorphise any animal, but these just begged to be assigned names, jobs and personality traits. Watching them, I found myself laughing out loud as they quarrelled with one another, slid down hills on their bellies and gave irate glares to any others approaching to steal their rocks.  They are total kleptomaniacs. 

We were instructed to stay away from alcohol on nights we will be camping as apparently it can lower your body temperature and lead to hypothermia.   This seems terribly unfair, and I will have to face the long night without even a glass of wine.  Assuming I survive (certainly not a given), I will provide a full report